Broken Hill cemetery. Headstone for Ali Ackbar in the Muslin section of the Broken Hill cemetery. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Broken Hill cemetery. Headstone for Ali Ackbar in the Muslin section of the Broken Hill cemetery. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
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| 説明 | Broken Hill Mine and town. The Barrier Ranges were discovered by Captain Charles Sturt in 1844 but it was not until 1876 that silver was discovered at Thackaringa near Silverton by Paddy Green the storekeeper of Menindee. Sturt had taken samples of mineral rocks back to the SA governor in 1844 but they were lost! The silver rush at Thackaringa not begin until 1880. At that time the NSW government sent a police officer and magistrate to Silverton. In 1883 Silverton was surveyed as a town and its own silver rush began. A year later it had a population of 1,745 with 3,000 near the town. There were dozens of silver mines and mining companies within thirty miles of Silverton. Then in September 1883 Charles Rasp an employee of the Mount Gipps sheep station saw a part of the ranges that looked promising for minerals so with other employees James Poole and David James he pegged off the Broken Hill mining lease as it looked like almost pure tin. Once aware of this mining claim George McCulloch, the leaseholder of Mount Gipps, held a meeting of all his station men. The seven men formed a syndicate pegging 7 more mining leases in the ranges covering all that is now Broken Hill. The syndicate was: Rasp boundary rider, McCulloch station leaseholder, George Urquhart sheep overseer, George Lind station bookkeeper, Philip Charley station hand, David James contractor and James Poole offsider of James. Within a year others took out the North Broken Hill blocks and others the South blocks. Early returns were poor and the lodes not rich but all lodes showed both silver and lead. By the end of 1884 chloride ores of lead and galena ores of silver and lead and some zinc were being mined. The first smelters were built at the mine. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was floated in August 1885. Only four of the original group of seven in the Broken Hill Mining Company were in the new BHP Company. The shares that were sold from the old syndicate for around £110 were worth one million pounds six years later! The new company offered 1,600 shares at £20 each in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. New shafts showed the lode went down almost vertically and was over 20 feet thick in places. The head office of BHP was located in Melbourne and the town of Broken Hill emerged around the BHP mines. Within days of the share release some shares were foolishly being sold for £13 a share. But in the first two months of operation the big mine produced over £44,000 worth of silver and lead. The first share dividend was given out three months after the company was formed! The first Broken Hill Post Office opened in 1885 as Silverton town and mines declined. The BHP mine shafts were over 200 feet by January 1886. By April BHP shares were worth £47 each. The BHP smelters opened in May 1886. In the next four months £67,000 worth of ore was obtained. By the end of 1886 shareholders had received over £4 for their initial share price of £20. The completion of the Peterborough to Silverton to Broken Hill railway set up BHP for more production in 1887. Original shareholders were going to be wealthy for at least the next 100 years or more. But the BHP mine was not the only mine- the other main ones were the South, Central, British, Block 14 and Block 10 mines. In 1888 BHP £20 shares reached £417 and their mine produced over £900,000 worth of ores including tin. In 1888 BHP was paying a regular dividend of £2 per share. In its first six years to 1891 BHP paid out £3,320,000 in dividends and produced over £7,000,000 worth of minerals. In its first four years BHP spent £175,000 on land, buildings, its smelters and machinery. By 1906 BHP had paid nearly £12,000,000 in dividends. By 1908 BHP employed 4,850 men and they were just one of several major companies in Broken Hill. BHP miners received a minimum of 10 shillings per eight hour shift in 1908. Three shower and bath rooms able to accommodate 500 men each were provided for those ending a shift. A major decision made by BHP in its early years was to end its smelting in Broken Hill in 1892 as there was not enough water there. Instead BHP developed their smelters at Port Pirie and railed the ores to that city from 1890 onwards. The British Broken Hill Company had established a smelter at Port Pirie in 1889 and BHP took this over and enlarged it. Eventually the smelters at Port Pirie smelted for five major Broken Hill mining companies. SA salt was required for the smelting of zinc in the Pirie smelters.By the end of 1888 Broken Hill was the third biggest city in NSW after Sydney and Newcastle. It had a population of over 10,000 people by the beginning of 1889 but in April 1886 there had been only 34 inhabitants! The first building there was the mine manager’s house for the Day Dream mine in 1885. The town was surveyed in April 1886. The first church as the Wesleyan Methodist church built in 1885. The Customs House was an important early structure levying goods from South Australia but mainly collecting revenue from ores produced. The first hotel, the Bonanza was licensed October 1885. More followed. Hotels, houses and hovels had been built all over Broken Hill by the end of 1888 and in 1908 there were 61 hotels in Broken Hill. The town was declared a municipality in 1888. By 1890 many stone shops and offices in Argent Street had been completed and the town had a population of 26,000 by 1891. But progress had not been smooth. Strikes had closed mining operations for short periods, a major fire had destroyed wooden buildings in Argent Street in 1888, a water famine was experienced in 1892 and a bigger strike occurred in 1892 and in 1893 several banks had failed as depression and crisis hit all of Australia. The first of many serious mine accidents occurred in 1895 when nine men were killed and many wounded followed by another accident killing three men in 1897. But early in the 20th century the city was well endowed with churches, halls and government buildings. In 1905 there were wooden Anglican, Salvation Army, Baptist, Congregational and four wooden Methodist churches in the town. There were also three stone Methodist Churches, the stone Catholic Church (now the Cathedral), the stone Presbyterian Church in Lane Street and a stone Anglican Church in Railway Town. The Town Hall was built in 1891 as was the current Post Office. The Courthouse was finished in 1889 and the Police Station was built in 1890. The first Trades Hall was built in 1898. Broken Hill in the 20th Century. By the early 20th century Broken Hill had 35,000 residents which was an all-time peak for the city. Some significant things occurred between 1900 and 1930. From 1902 to 1926 steam powered trams ran along Argent Street. Minor city centres developed in Railway Town and in South Broken Hill with shops, churches halls etc. An eastern railway reached the city in 1919 but it was only a spur line from Menindee with no other connections and a small timber station was built in Sulphide Street. The great western line from Sydney had reached Parkes in 1893. It was extended to Condobolin in 1898. It reached Menindee in 1927 thus completing a line from Broken Hill to Sydney. The world famous Silver City Comet train, the first air conditioned train in the British Empire, began service in 1937. It operated to and from Parkes connecting to a Sydney train. It ceased in 1989. When the service closed local residents protested and since 1993 they have had a once a week Outback Explorer train from Parkes to Broken Hill connecting to Sydney. In 1970 the new standard gauge line from Sydney to Perth opened & the Indian Pacific now calls into Broken Hill twice a week on its transcontinental services. With a half dozen mining companies dominating the city and with the mining industry being heavily unionised Broken Hill has had a number of significant strikes and lock outs by the mine owners. In the 1880s miners went on strike to ensure only unionised miners were employed. Later all workers in the city had to be in unions or black listing was applied even to shopkeepers and small businesses. One of the worst mining strikes was in 1909 when miners were locked out for five months if they did not accept BHP’s offer a reduction of 12.5% of their wages. Scab works were ostracised sometimes violently. The strike put considerable stress on miners, their families and businesses in the town. This was followed by the worst strike in 1919/1920 when miners struck for 18 months. Earlier strikes during WWI tried to reduce the 48 hour week to a 40 hour week and to improve conditions. But between 1910 and 1919 a total of 141 miners and been killed at work; temperatures deep in shafts were often around 110 degrees Fahrenheit and wages were static. As metal prices worldwide dropped the mining companies tried to reduce wages. The workers wanted a wage increase, better safety and a 30 hour working week and compensation for industrial diseases and injuries. Thus the strike began. Cooperative depots were established by the unions to provide bread, butter, potatoes and onions to the families. In 1920 when metal prices began to rise again the mining companies were more prepared to negotiate. The companies accepted a 40 hour week for miners and 44 hours work for surface workers and miners suffering from tuberculosis or lead poisoning were to be compensated. Finally a ruling by the NSW Industrial Commission settled the dispute. During the strikes the unions bands and musicians would lead hundreds of picketers to the mine gates. The dissatisfaction with wages and conditions fostered some radicalism with Communists and other radicals joining the ranks of the miners. In 1923 all the town’s unions united in the Barrier Industrial Council led by Paddy O’Neill until 1948. |
| 撮影日 | 2019-11-02 13:13:31 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.001 sec (1/800) |
| 開放F値 | f/5.0 |